TNTP’s innovative Practitioner Teacher Program has prepared more than 1,100 educators for high-need schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But it’s the quality, not the quantity, of these teachers that is drawing notice. A 2008 study found that teachers prepared by the program exceeded even experienced teachers in their impact on student achievement in math, reading and language arts.
In 1999, an alarming 13.1 percent of Louisiana’s teachers did not possess certification in the area in which they taught. The state convened a Blue Ribbon Commission on Teacher Quality to recommend new accountability policies for universities and school districts. Among the recommendations: strengthen the certification options available to new teacher candidates.
In 2001, encouraged by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, TNTP introduced its Practitioner Teacher Program (PTP) in Louisiana as a streamlined, innovative path to certification. The first non-university teacher preparation program in the state, the PTP transforms outstanding recent college graduates and career changers into highly effective teachers for high-need schools. Noted by the editorial boards of The New York Times and major newspapers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the PTP has expanded the pipeline of new teachers for critical subject areas in Louisiana without sacrificing quality.
Teaching for Results
Specifically tailored to the backgrounds and needs of alternate route teachers, the PTP works with beginning teachers from four highly selective programs—Teach For America, Teach Baton Rouge, teachNOLA and the Louisiana Teaching Fellows—to leverage their content knowledge into effective teaching practice. The path to certification via the PTP is efficient and intense, typically taking 12 months and combining coursework, full-time teaching and multiple assessments.
The PTP centers on TNTP’s Teaching for Results content seminars, which take the place of university coursework and operate in small, content-specific groups led by experienced teachers. From start to finish, the PTP takes a “backwards design” approach that teaches participants how to build lesson plans and assessments with content standards in mind. To gain certification, candidates must successfully complete a rigorous portfolio assessment, including evidence of student achievement and survey results from principals, parents, and students.
Strengthening Teacher Quality in Louisiana
The PTP prepares teachers for classrooms that have high concentrations of student poverty and persistent records of poor performance. To date, the PTP has brought 1,138 effective new teachers to nine Louisiana urban and rural school districts (including the Recovery School District) and to 35 charter schools; about 810 of these individuals have gained full certification as of December 2008. Of program participants surveyed, 92 percent agreed that participating in the PTP’s content seminars helped them become more effective teachers.
In 2008, a state-sponsored value-add study looking at the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs in Louisiana gave the PTP a Level 1 rating (the highest possible) in math, reading and language arts. The study found that the PTP prepared novice teachers who were more effective than new and experienced teachers in terms of their impact on student achievement in these areas. In mathematics, PTP-trained teachers’ average effect on student growth was nearly three times greater than teachers of the next strongest program, and sufficient to counteract the deteriorating effect that poverty has on student learning from year to year. In the words of the New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial board, “Those findings should put to rest any doubts about the wisdom of placing these teachers in classrooms with needy students.”
These exceptional results speak to the high quality of individuals enrolled in the PTP, and to the efficacy of the program’s approach to teacher development. In December 2008, the editorial board of The New York Times wrote that rigorous, innovative programs like the Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program demonstrate why, “The New Teacher Project [has] a big role to play in the effort to improve teacher preparation nationally.”
In Focus | Practitioner Teacher Profile
For 10 years, Rose Kendrick used her Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry with a 4.0 GPA to work as an Environmental Chemist for Dow Chemical. In 2001 she decided to make a career change to teaching and entered TNTP’s Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program. “I was part of a professional learning community,” Rose said. “My Content Seminar Leader helped new teachers with instructional strategies as well as non-instructional issues such as how to get the students to believe in you as a teacher, gaining their trust so that you can have a positive effect on student achievement.” After serving as a successful math teacher at Scotlandville Middle School in East Baton Rouge Parish, Rose became the Math and Science Coordinator at Glen Oaks Middle School, helping other teachers implement curriculum and use student test score data to refine instruction and improve student achievement. Rose earned National Board Certification in December 2006, and was selected to serve on NBPTS’s DREAM project, an initiative developed to encourage more minority teachers in high-need schools to pursue National Board Certification. “I could have done many different things after leaving my job as a chemist,” Rose said, “but teaching is my ministry, this is what I was supposed to be doing from the beginning.” |
Of Louisiana principals with Practitioner Teachers in their schools, 95 percent would hire another, and two out of three reported that Practitioner Teachers were better than other first-year teachers in terms of raising student achievement.
